


Simple Gifts

by 221b_hound



Series: Guitar Man [104]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Birthday Presents, Gen, Sherlock Holmes's Birthday, Surprises
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-06
Updated: 2015-01-06
Packaged: 2018-03-06 08:45:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,093
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3128381
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/221b_hound/pseuds/221b_hound
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The boys from Baker Street don't really do birthdays. But eight year old Violet Morstan Watson has other plans.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Simple Gifts

**Author's Note:**

> The 6th January is generally considered to be Sherlock Holmes's birthday. The canonical character is 161 this year. (Well, we know he's not dead - anyone who is anyone has their obituary in The Times and they remain strangely silent on the subject.)
> 
> So - birthday fic for Sherlock!

Violet was eight years old in the year that Sherlock was blind-sided by The Birthday With All The Presents. She had made a friend at school with the perennially awkward birthdate (at least in a country of Christian-based holidays) of 31st December, and thus Violet learned about the perennial disappointment of those born within two weeks either side of Christmas. Through the prism of Caitlyn’s sad resignation, Violet became well acquainted with the fiasco of 'one gift for two occasions but not twice as awesome' and the tragedy of 'no birthday parties full of friends who are all away on holiday'.

Because she was the daughter of four people who asked questions all the time, Violet learned through Mycroft (often via Ford) and Mrs Hudson that Sherlock had given up on celebrating his birthday when he was very young. His birthday had never been much of a big deal in his childhood – frankly, Christmas was depressing enough most of the time – and it had become less and less so as he grew up.

This, thought Violet, was an _outrage_. And now that she understood what a tragedy it was, and feeling guilty for not having made a fuss herself before now (and she knew through Caitlyn’s sorrow how bad Sherlock must feel over the neglect) she began her Schemes and Plans the day right after Boxing Day.

Violet was also the daughter of four people who were, when occasion demanded, super organised and super-duper determined. She texted and she phoned and she pulled people aside at the Christmas Concert and the more private Christmas Party. She engaged her peers in a campaign to make sure all the adults understood the urgency and importance of the undertaking. She made herself the central organising point and then she insisted Mrs Hudson hide everything downstairs until The Big Morning.

*

Here’s a thing. Even people who know John and Sherlock very well often get things wrong about them. 

For example, many once assumed that John was the one who be the good little social organiser. They believed that he was the ‘nice’ one, and therefore, the one who would remember birthdays and anniversaries, and that it was Sherlock who had to be constantly reminded. In truth, everyone who ever met them assumed this on some level, whether they consciously thought about it or not.

In point of fact, Sherlock knew everyone's birthdate. He knew key anniversaries. He knew – it was just that he didn't used to _care_. Let’s face it. He’s _Sherlock Holmes_. If he didn’t remember the exact date, he _noticed_ impending celebrations. He'd note the clues – from demeanour, dress, stray mail on sideboards or in in-trays, or just other people's preparations – and associate them with a likely festivity or a date in his mind palace: and then ignore it. What was the point in a friendless loner acting on such knowledge? Very few people ever welcomed such a thing from him, and the few who did were not people he wished to please.

But then Sherlock turned out to not truly be a loner and far from friendless. He found there were people in his life whom he would not mind pleasing just a _little_. So he began to do things. _Little_ things. Not gifts or cards, but small acts of… kindness might be putting it too strongly, but certainly there was deliberate thoughtfulness in them.

He might engineer a little help towards a more successful occasion by dropping canny hints on the most suitable surprise gift to those who _did_ indulge in gift-giving. For Mrs Hudson, he might desist from any noisy or noxious experiments that day; for Lestrade, a fresh, full cup of really good coffee and a danish absent-mindedly abandoned on the DI’s desk that Greg pounced on gleefully like it was a prize. In later years, for Tad, a day of no rude comments and even the occasional ‘hmm’ of agreement over some correct observation. For some people, like Molly, Mary and Nirupa, a rare but genuine compliment, delivered in an off-hand way as he ended a conversation or left a room. 

Thus the friends of this former loner would have a subtly more pleasant, more fruitful day, and not know why, but it would be so.

(The children were different but then, Sherlock had a very different relationship with all the children than he’d ever had with any adult in his life.)

Sherlock always remembered John's birthday, of course, but he knew it was a problematic time for John.

It was a years before Sherlock learned John’s childhood history and of the disappointment and grief associated with the day (so often forgotten by his father and sister, and the forgetting made more painful by the memory of the fuss his mother used to make – later on, poverty at university and then the circumstances of a life lived in war zones made such celebrations, already anathema, unlikely), but he could see from the start that John didn't much like to acknowledge the day of his birth.

Still, Sherlock did those little things for John too. He found distractions for his friend - if not a case, then a request for advice on an obscure bit of research requiring medical, military or contemporary music expertise; an apparently random decision to eat at Angelo’s, a row about the appropriate receptacle for eyeballs that got so ludicrous they both ended up sitting on the kitchen floor nearly crying with laughter and having to air the flat to get rid of the smell of microwaved corneas.

(John liked his birthday better after Violet was old enough to start giving him hand-drawn cards and the kind of odd non-sequitur gifts that little kids are apt to give - a bright red whistle on a bright red lanyard, a bunch of flowers she’d picked herself rather illegally from a public garden; a Dr Fangor action figure she saved up to buy from her own pocket money. He still has them all, in a box in a bookshelf at the cottage in Sussex. Sherlock pressed the flowers for him one year by pretending he’d accidentally shut them in a heavy volume – another of his small, hidden gifts for John.)

John, despite persistent belief to the contrary, was terrible at remembering birthdays. Dates passed him by without him having the faintest idea, unless he'd been invited to the party. 

What John _did_ do, however, was celebrate _un_ birthdays. Which is to say, he bought random gifts for random people at random times of the year, depending on what he saw that took his fancy. Some of them were serious: nice cheeses (Greg) or unusual paintings (Molly); antiquarian books (Rupe) or film posters of old musicals (Tad); a pretty necklace (Mrs Hudson) or a tiny yet perfect scale model of the Sydney Harbour Bridge (Mary); a box of the most exquisite Turkish Delight he’d ever tasted (Mycroft) or a pair of fingerless, soft leather gloves which he’d found personally just the thing for long, cold stakeouts (Sally). Others were teasing and silly. But there were many of them.

Along with the semi-constant stream of gifts for the children – his own and everyone else’s – three or four times a year, John’s friends and family would find him handing over something small and perfect almost as an afterthought as he went about his business.

Random unbirthday gifts John gave to Sherlock over the years included a framed picture made of an enlargement of a stained slide of a bee’s eye; a box each of gold and silver rosin from a famed luthier in Prague; a book of tiny murder scene dioramas called _The Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death_ and an antique trepanning drill that was later instrumental in solving a particularly grisly crime.

*

Given this rich background in non-gift-giving on birthdays, the Birthday With All The Presents was one of the few times that Sherlock was taken utterly by surprise. And by an eight year old. .

Sherlock rose in the morning to find John making breakfast. John, noting the fact that his flatmate was dressed in a sheet and nothing else despite the chill winter morning, looked askance at him. “Pants,” he said.

Sherlock, sleep-fuddled, blinked at him.

“Violet has texted she, Rupe and Mary will be here in…” John’s phone beeped shrilly and John peered at it. “Eight minutes now. I’ve been getting a countdown.”

“Why are they counting down to their arrival?”

“Haven’t the foggiest. Here.” He slid a fried egg onto some waiting toast and slapped a scoop of fried mushrooms next to it. “Eat.”

“You said ‘pants’.”

John served his own breakfast up, shoved the pan into the sink then dropped into his chair. “I’m having a bet with myself this morning to see which of them you can’t be bothered to do. So far I’m giving myself very good odds on you not bothering with pants until they’re actually in the door.”

Sherlock shovelled a forkful of mushrooms into his mouth, chewed quickly and swallowed. “You’ve tried the reverse psychology path before, you know.”

John set about his eggs and mushrooms with his usual efficiency and washed down a mouthful with a swig of tea. “The beauty of betting with myself,” he said, sawing at egg on toast again, “Is that I can’t lose. I also gave myself very good odds on you eating one mouthful of breakfast before racing off to get pantsified.”

“ _Pantsified_.” Sherlock’s disdain hung in the air like a miasma.

John swallowed another mouthful and grinned, supremely unconcerned by the miasma. “Yep. Made it up myself. If Shakespeare can invent words, so I can bloody well do it, too.”

“You,” said Sherlock in a devastating deadpan, “Are not _Shakespeare_.”

John, immune to Sherlock’s deadpanning, smirked and polished off his breakfast in two more bites. He carried his crockery and cutlery to the sink. A moment later, Sherlock’s dirty dishes joined the pile and he disappeared in a whirl of white linen.

Sherlock emerged, not only pantisified but shirtified (though still unsockified and non-shoeified) just as the door flew open and Mary, Rupe, Violet and Mrs Hudson bowled in.

“HAPPY BIRTHDAY SHERLOCK!!!!!” shouted Violet as she ran at him, full tilt, arms wide. Sherlock caught her up and staggered back a little as she wound her legs and arms around him and gave him Death Hug 5000. He was laughing as he caught his breath.

Still wound around him like a very affectionate and energetic limpet, Violet shouted over Sherlock’s left shoulder: “MRS H! DO THE HONOURS!!!”

Sherlock, wondering how long it would take to restore hearing in that ear, turned to see Mrs Hudson bring a giant basket into the flat. The basket was so laden with brightly wrapped things that Nirupa had to help Mrs H carry it. Mary dashed ahead of them to clear the table of salt and pepper shakers while Violet unwound herself from Sherlock’s torso.

“Come on!” she said, taking his hand and tugging him to the table, “Sit!”

Sherlock, bemused, sat.

Mrs Hudson took the topmost thing in the basket – a large cake carrier – and set it on the table. She took off the lid to reveal a beautiful cake, iced in rich chocolate and decorated in candied orange segments.

Sherlock stared and he blinked.

He blinked at John.

"What the hell...?"

"It's your birthday."

"I know it's my birthday. What the hell is all this?"

John grinned. “Ask Violet.”

Sherlock turned to Violet. Violet grinned too, her own grin just as exuberant, joyful and gleeful as her mother’s and father’s combined. Her excitement bubbled over in speech so fast you’d have to be a hummingbird, or Sherlock Holmes, to follow it.

“It’s a workday and everyone has to work but us, and Ford is in Paris with Mycroft and Sally for a New Year holiday and it’s your birthday and it sucks to have a birthday over the holidays, Caitlyn said so, it makes her really sad, and then I realised that your birthdays must all suck so much because it’s right after Christmas and it’s cold all the time and at school all your friends would have been away for the holidays and now everybody works or is away for the holidays again, and Daddy never ever remembers anyone’s birthday but mine and Ford’s and it’s not fair you don’t get big parties and you probably just get one present for both Christmas and your birthday from everyone, and Caitlyn says it’s never twice as good, and that’s just the rottenest thing, so I made sure you had a proper birthday this year and this one is from Uncle Mycroft and Aunt Sally, and this one is from Aunt Molly and Uncle Greg…” here Violet had begun to unload gifts from the basket and pile them in front of Sherlock while he continued to stare in shell-shocked bemusement, “And this one is from Uncle Tad and Charlotte and Nicola and Theresa, and this one is from David and Chris and Chloe, and this one is from Mum, and this one is from Rupe, and this one is from Mrs H, and this one is from the for-ens-ics team and this one is from Angelo and this one is from Henry Knight and this one is from the guys at Speedy’s, and this one is from the man with the funny hand who said you helped him find his dog, and this one is from Ford and this one is from Daddy and this one is from _me_.”

And she stood in front of him, breathless, beaming, pointing to a large and badly wrapped parcel and looking immensely pleased with herself. All around them, loved ones beamed at him indulgently. All that expectation. Only John’s expression contained the right level of … waiting to see what he would do, rather than waiting for a particular, expected response.

Sherlock just kept… blinking. Until Violet’s grin began to falter. And then he reached out to rest his hand on her shoulder. “You planned all of this yourself?”

“Mrs Hudson helped a bit,” Violet said, eyes fixed on Sherlock’s, “And Ford. But the idea was mine. Is it okay?”

Sherlock met her gaze and the skin around his eyes crinkled in a smile, and his pale eyes were bright and sharp. “Nobody has ever organised a surprise birthday for me before.”

“Everyone should have at least one surprise birthday,” said Violet solemnly, “Uncle Greg said so.”

Sherlock leaned forward to kiss Violet’s forehead. “Well, this is mine, and it’s obviously the best because, frankly Violet, it takes quite a lot of doing to surprise me. And you have.”

Violet’s grin was back on high beam. “Did I really?”

“I was not in any way expecting anything for my birthday today. Let alone…” Sherlock’s glance darted to the huge pile of gifts and the cake on the table, “Anything like this.”

Violet squealed her approval, jumped up and down on the spot, clapped her hands and then wrapped her arms around his head to give him a headlock version of Death Hug 5000. “Happy birthday, Sherlock,” she said into his untidy mass of curls.

Sherlock’s laughter was muffled against her collarbone. Then he pulled her into his lap and sat tall and imperious, so that the gathered audience could sing Happy Birthday to him, as was only fitting, since it was meant to be all about him. Rupe lit the forty eight candles on the cake. His family obliged him with a song, and then Violet helped him to blow all the candles out.

“Wow,” said Violet when they were done, “That’s a _lot_ of candles.”

“Not as many as your father’s would have,” said Sherlock smugly, and suffered his best friend to call him a git in an affectionate tone.

The unwrapping of the gifts was much more entertaining than the similar Christmas ceremony, mainly because they were all for him and nobody else. Some were thoughtful, some were silly, some were both.

Violet’s gift to him turned out to be a Useful Box. It was made of wood and had two secret compartments, in which she’d put pictures of her and Ford. “It’s for when I’m away. I’m always finding stuff I want to send you when Rupe and Mummy and I are travelling. This way, I can send you things and you can keep them in here so you know I’m thinking about you.”

Sherlock, who had until now pretended to be slightly bored by all the gifts, except the cutlass-shaped letter opener he got from Ford, crushed her in a hug. “I’m always thinking of you too,” he said to her.

He opened John’s gift last of all, and spend a good sixty seconds just staring at the coffee cup.

“You drink coffee out of it,” hinted John, amused at the reaction.

Sherlock picked it up by the handle and turned it this way and that, but no matter how he looked at it, it remained unchanged. The image of two owls, in colours that absolutely did not ever appear in any natural owl, perched together on a branch, surmounting eight equally bright letters in a childish font.

**BFFS 4 EVA.**

“Violet suggested this to you to give me,” said Sherlock when he could find the speech that bemusement and horror had robbed from him.

John smiled wryly and still affectionately. “Guilty as charged,” he confessed, “She handed it to me with strict instructions that I get it for you and... I agreed.”

Because as much as these two men loved each other, they still rarely ever expressed it in actual words. In touch, in deed, in music and even in silence, every single day, but almost never in the most obvious way, in language.

The horror vanished from Sherlock’s expression and he looked back at the awful cup with more than a little fondness himself.

“You’re the green one,” he asserted. He held the cup out to John. “I believe it ought to be christened. Coffee.”

John took the cup and in the kitchen he bustled through making tea, coffee and hot chocolate for those assembled.

The BFFS 4 EVA owl cup survived Baker Street and made all the way to retirement. It was the only cup in which Sherlock never conducted any experiments.

The following year, Ford and his parents remained in London so Sherlock had a relatively quiet family breakfast. No other birthday of Sherlock’s was ever so surprising or extravagant, but it never again passed without some kind of celebration.

Violet made sure of it.

 

**Author's Note:**

> The title is from the 18th century song ‘Simple Gifts’. Here are [ Yo Yo Ma and Alison Krauss playing it](http://youtu.be/fYi9Vr8bHJY).
> 
> Also, here is [the owl BFF coffee cup](http://i3.cpcache.com/product/667624205/bff_best_friends_forever_owls_coffee_mug.jpg?side=b&height=225&width=225)
> 
> And here is the [ Nutshell Studies book ](http://www.amazon.com/dp/1580931456) which I aim to buy for my own birthday this year. :D


End file.
